"You're still swinging those swords around? Well… Guess I shouldn't be mad, you're doing me a favor, getting yourself winded like that," Ume placed her wand on her shoulder while she admired the fruitless labor of her opponent.

The last thing she expected was the water cylinder expanding and beginning to bubble all over before bursting into a blast of water that sent her flying as well due to being too close. Even when the medical kunoichi had been making sure to slip in a medical jutsu or two on an occasion, she did not rise from her fall easily.

Taking the blast from within the cylinder had smashed Quill B's goggles and snapped the rubber string holding them together. It was now that the orchid-colored, strict eyes of the panting Kumogakure ninja became clear and visible. When taken into consideration together with his torn-up leather bodysuit and busted, still bleeding nose, he was a frightful sight to see across on the other side of the battlefield.

Ume formed maces of Water Release chakra on each end of her wand and charged at her opponent, swinging at Quill B while he recovered. He acrobatics and fancy footwork were gone, so was Quill B's iron resolve though. The exhaustion of battle made all men and women equal, now they were just two ninja drawing from the deepest reserves of chakra and bolstering their bodies with them, doing everything they could to take the other down.

Quill B raised his swords up to block the strike, in his current state, until he caught some breaths and replenished his lungs with some sweet oxygen he couldn't see another way of avoiding having his head smashed. The shoddy steel let out a deafening pop when the upper halves of the swords flew off across the arena with one half of the busted sword sliding across a few meters from where it had landed while the other embedded itself into the dirt and had managed to stay that way, despite the momentum it carried.

Blood streamed in an arc, following the trajectory of Quill B's bow-shaped flight from the rising slam of the aquatic mace. He took a nasty bump to the head, just slightly dulled out by his half-successful block. Ume proceeded through a handful of seemingly pointless dance moves though to anyone who was familiar with the art of taijutsu knew that they weren't quite so pointless – they were a way to effectively transition from one stance to another, an art of moving one's body while maintaining one's defenses and utilizing momentum in an optimal way.

Quill B yelled out in pain, hearing his voice was such an equivalent to a drizzle in the middle of the desert soaking one's face that hearing it felt especially grim. Ume's mace thrust and slammed across in the middle of the shoulder blades of the Kumogakure ninja, sending him flying like an arrow to the other side of the arena until he got close enough to the wall where some spectators would have thought he'd ended up stuck in it with his head or, even worse, snapped his neck slamming into it.

If the beholder of this gruesome exchange would have been oblivious enough to call such an outcome lucky, Quill B was lucky to land inches away from the wall and slid the distance between him and the wall. The hard feeling of limestone against the back of his head seemed to wake him up from the woozy of combat, the wall served as a nice support platform for the fallen Kumogakure ninja to rise again.

Ume had made a small mistake, sending him flying that hard, now he was too much for her to follow up in her own state of weary. She could not have rushed up to Quill B and just slammed his face in until she knocked the common sense into him to surrender. Quill B took the stance of his hidden technique. Secret techniques that could have been performed under extreme duress were rare and valuable.

"All Spikes: Quillblade!" Quill B muttered to himself before vanishing. Only the grisly vibration of steel buzzing through the air, becoming louder as it moved up to his opponent remained of his presence. Quill B appeared once again many paces behind his opponent, stumbled on one knee but quickly stood back up.

It was only when Ume's damaged veins caught up with the extensive damage of being skewered by four swords in a mad, aerial roll of her opponent and sent pulses of blood squirting before the presence of the weaponry inside her body suppressed the bleeding somewhat by shutting down most of her wounds and the Kirigakure kunoichi fell to the ground that the sight of Quill B having left four swords stuck in her body in his passing caught on with the audience.

"That's it, man / My man's ultimate secret technique / Nobody can spin like my man span / That girl's chances now are bleak / Though this is a last resort type of ace of spades / My man's used out all his blades," Ripper Inaba sighed in relief.

"No," Teclaim Laoch pointed out. "He still has one sword in his sheath. He saved one for if his opponent recovers from this or if she had managed to avoid it."

"If he went all in and used out all five swords – he would have finished her off," Kiyomi stated.

"Maybe, but his opponent is a medical ninja, two things she's skilled at are evasion and recovery, even in the heat of battle. It was the safer option." Temari argued.

A husky and wet-sounding cough made Quill B turn around and draw his final short sword from its sheath, adopting a position fitting for utilizing the weapon in a thrust-oriented style of the Naked Blade form of swordsmanship. Ume rolled sideways, the moment the tip of one of the swords stabbing her touched the ground she whined out in pain and spat some blood out on the ground. Her shaking hand grabbed her wand that laid further to the side.

Quill's orchid stare sharpened, his body vanished again. A race against a critically wounded opponent was one that he could have won, a prolonged engagement against a ninja specializing in controlling the battlefield, however, he could not. The sandal of Quill B hit the wand first, kicking it further aside while he rolled his sword in his right hand and flashed it toward his downed opponent. A few members of the Ninja Council jumped up from their chairs, including the Seventh Naruto but the sword of the Kumogakure ninja stopped just a hair's length shy from stabbing through the kunoichi's chest where her heart laid deeper in.

Ume's powerless body slumped, knowing when she's beaten she stopped augmenting her body with chakra to keep going through critical injury and just allowed herself the luxury of passing out instead of admitting defeat. A handful of green-vests rushed the stage to remove the defeated medical ninja from the arena while Quill B pushed the ninja offering him help in taking him to the infirmary and began limping toward the exit himself. Stoic and bitter with his expression, his right hand still clutching the handle of the final sword that had not broken though would still need replacing before he would need to draw his blades again.

The first match was over.

"Holy crap, I mean!" Boruto took a few steps back from the screen and took a few moments to scan the other examinees. He felt like he was the only one shaken by the violence and drastic means employed on the stage, there were a few youngsters that weren't used to such a bloody sight though most present in the waiting area looked grim though accustomed to such outcomes.

"What's wrong, kid? Expected them to just throw a few punches and one of them to cry quits when they thought it hurt too much?" Temari gave Boruto a demeaning look. "These are ninja fighting each other to prove themselves, I'm surprised that the Quill guy had the restraint to not kill his opponent."

"Don't be so hasty to bully the kid / Killing people in the exams is in poor taste / Though my man did what he did / There's no need to copy-paste," Ripper Inaba stepped in between Boruto who's been moving away from the rest of the examinees that were beginning to feel alien to him by accepting such uncivilized methods of fighting so nonchalantly.

"You've got nothing to worry about, kid, your opponent's a pushover, you won't get roughed up like that," Kiyomi took a look of pity at the appalled brat.

"It's not about that, I mean!" Boruto became more and more like his old man in the way he got into people's faces when he disagreed with something. Though the boy still lacked the eloquence to put the exact source of his horrid outlook toward the event to words that would have been efficient enough to affect the waiting room.

Teclaim Laoch, a tall Hoshigakure ninja pounded his palm with his fist and stretched his neck out a pair of times before walking off to the stage for his turn to brawl it out. Boruto approached Kiyomi and Meiko and knocked on Meiko's waist like it was a door.

"That Laoch guy, do you know him, I mean?" Boruto asked. "I know Tsuru and I don't want her to get roughed up like that Kirigakure girl or killed."

"We've met Laoch, we fought him a couple of years ago. Don't worry, he thinks that killing during the Chuunin Exams is in poor taste. He's a strong guy but he won't kill your friend." Meiko took off her helmet so that Boruto could see her eyes when she reassured him.

"I'm right here, you know…" Tsuru pouted her lips and walked off after tilting her nose and turning it away from Boruto and the pair he asked for reassurance.

The lass couldn't have been blamed for feeling a bit intimidated. Laoch was the type of guy that didn't look like much of a ninja as much as he looked like a mercenary or a soldier. While he had streamlined his armor to where it no longer looked like massive rocks stuck to his body and stuck with layers of hardened cement, choosing to adopt a black bodysuit weave and much slicker, white armor with thick, metallic tubes over each armor piece, his face didn't invite much comfort as well as it looked like something that belonged to a mean bruiser that wasn't afraid to take a few hits as long as he got to dish 'em out from up close too.

"Now what do we know about both of these examinees? Can we expect a match as brutal as the last one?" Konohamaru asked his colleagues in commentary while the slightly reduced in size waiting room watched on the event they themselves would soon be a part of.

"Tsuru Itoi is a girl that most of us are familiar with. She's made strides of mastering sealing techniques that no Academy Student would ever be capable of executing. I'd say she's overlooked in this competition, due to the fact she doesn't look like an extravagant and flashy competitor, but being able to perform C-Rank Sealing Jutsu before graduating the Academy has to count for something, right?" Moegi brought up.

"Indeed, though I can't overlook how unfair the match-up looks from the first sight, I mean just look at her opponent in Teclaim Laoch from Hoshigakure. This guy looks mean and willing to dish out damage. Not to mention, he's at least a handful of years older than his opponent, which translates to years of experience and time training and honing his skills, participating in missions that Tsuru just won't have and will have to somehow compensate and that's a tough thing to do." Udon pointed out.

"Well, this can either go very well or very bad, nothing much we can do but look on, it seems," Konohamaru leaned back in his chair and focused on the action that was about to take place.

This match was nothing like the previous one, the moment that the jounin proctor declared the beginning of the match and blurred away, Laoch raised his arm up, directing the wrist canons on his gauntlets straight at his opponent and launching a blinding flurry of senbon at the intensity of an automated fire. Tsuru clearly was not expecting such a ruthless approach leaving her no other choice but to react on her feet.

"Hair Binding Technique!" she yelled out, manipulating her hair to where it elongated and extended in front of her, placing a hairy barrier while chakra tensed the hair to be hard as steel. Despite performing adequately at erecting a protective barrier, its width and sturdiness were not enough to avoid taking any damage, as evidenced by a handful of senbon sticking out from the kunoichi with red dots suggesting that the entry was less than precise and painless.

Tsuru stumbled a pair of steps in pain after her hair returned to its place, she wasted time noticing the senbon sticking out from her sides and shoulders and wiping a minor streak of blood running down her lip from an internal injury she had sustained. Laoch, on the other hand, set off jets of chakra in the boots of his armor and accelerated toward his opponent to pummel her in the close distance now that he had successfully taken the upper hand.

"Tsuru…" Boruto clenched his fists.

"Don't worry, no one's gonna let your girlfriend out there die." Temari cheeked the kid by nudging him with her elbow. "Though her opponent's pretty good. Those senbon ripping at such speed, they're more than just needles, the impact they leave have to leave mean internal injury too."

"Yeah, no wonder he's rushing in close – with her bones and gut all aching up, Tsuru's got no chance of keeping up with him, no matter what skill in taijutsu she's got." Meiko nodded.

"She's not my girlfriend, I mean!" Boruto growled at the Sunagakure kunoichi stepping in to get all over her face but Temari's backward stretched arm prevented him from as much as touching her.

"Hair Needle Senbon!" Tsuru, instead of preparing her body to deal with the rushing juggernaut raised her arms up and directed her hair to harden with chakra channeling through it and unleash a flurry of senbon of her own, ones of natural making as her hair did their best to make Laoch into a pincushion.

Laoch pushed the immediate breaks, raising his right arm to take the storm of senbon and deal with it using the right arm of his armor as a blocking tool. Despite being armored to the point of appearing like a human tank, the senbon left more than just scratches to the armor's paint job upon contact, instead, leaving deep ridges and bending it with dents due to the sheer strength of impact. More than a few hair senbon hit Laoch's right arm, penetrating through the black weave covering underneath his armor plates and etching too deep to just be pulled out easily.

Laoch bent his right arm and waved it around to see how well it still functioned. He fired a short series of senbon up into the air just to check if his automated senbon launchers still worked as intended or if Tsuru's mid-range technique had damaged them.

"Huh? He just stopped?" Temari wondered.

"Laoch's armor is entirely operated with his chakra. It's not a gadget or anything. It's almost like a form of puppeteering, in a way." Meiko explained.

"Yeah, I can get that…" Temari nodded.

"So, he just realized that Tsuru had some way of controlling the range between her and her opponent, making him attacking her from long or mid-range the only way of engaging her without having to deal with attacks like this that damage his armor," Meiko explained.

"So he's sweating on figuring out if he's got the chakra to take her out from afar since his option of just swinging his fists around has been taken away from him…" Temari worked it out by herself.

"Not gonna let you run away! String Light Formation!" Tsuru yelled out and pressed her hands together in a hand seal position, erecting a barrier around her that stretched out into the mid-range in the form of interconnected sealing glyphs that weaved together in a shape resembling a web. "Now, Hair Needle Senbon!"

Laoch used the jets of both his boots to unleash a stream of blue flames toward his opponent. The blue flames managed to not only singe up the hair senbon by overwhelming them with a larger concentration of chakra in the form of blue chakra blazes but also hit Tsuru and send her outside of her own barrier, breaking it.

Tsuru crawled back a few paces, looking at the burn on her right arm with tears in her eyes that were called out by both the powerful resonance of pain in the burnt area as well as the intense pulse of heat that she had to deal with inside that barrier. Now that he was free to control his own range as he saw fit, Laoch dashed back and took it soaring to the skies.

"Tsuru doesn't have many options of controlling the battle in the long-range, let alone attacking an airborne opponent," Kiyomi muttered.

"Yeah, she's made a mistake by showing her String Light Formation in such a way, by trying to keep her opponent at a specific range she basically told him where she's the most comfortable fighting." Tasure Kaeron from Kirigakure showed his teeth in a smirk.

"It wasn't much of a mistake, she kind of had to utilize her chance at keeping her opponent mid-range. If there was a chance to take control over the match, she had to take it, even if it did end up burning up in her face." Relta Ginn disagreed with that assessment.

Floating in mid-air, Laoch pointed his right fist at Tsuru. A flare of flames lit up at around his elbow as his gauntlet fired itself like a rocket straight at the kunoichi. Tsuru used her Hair Binding Jutsu to wrap hardened strands of her hair around the rocket and swing it the other way but the rocket fixed its trajectory and slammed right by the girl's feet, throwing her off-balance. The rocket then burst from underground, knocking Tsuru off her feet again as it attached back to its owner's unarmored hand, making it armored again.

"Drill of Ragnarok," Laoch declared.

"Ragnarok?" Meiko pressed her index against her cheek, trying to recall where she had heard the name of that technique. "It's the minefield jutsu he used against us!" it all came back to her.

"So it seems… Laoch found a better way to set it up in those few years we haven't seen him, it looks." Kiyomi nodded.

Tsuru Itoi found herself in quite a predicament, with her opponent airborne and controlling the battle with his long-range attacks and a minefield of explosive Fire Release spheres being set up underneath her feet, threatening to go off whenever she makes the wrong move. It was the type of match control that granted one a promotion, at least unless Tsuru found a way to impress the Ninja Council even more and somehow take all the credit from Laoch's impressive stacking of the deck all to herself by managing to overcome these odds.